Is there REALLY such thing as gender?

I think the thing is, it isn't something that is easy to point at and say "there is the gene: Ksr210-4"

There are evidently several things that can occur to make a person act the way they do, think the way they do, want and desire things, and look a certain way. This is like deafness, something I do undy better. there are many genetic forms, and not genetic, there are recessive forms of many sorts, and dominant as well. Beyond that, the genetic one passed on can express itself in a plethora of ways! Within same family unit, the same gene can cause a profoundly deaf at birth child, one who needs hearing aids but can hear themselves speak, and one may think they are hearing until later on it shows up latent! I am the latter.

Personally, if you friend me on EC you can see my photos. You will see my face looks quite male in many ways. I have passed for male at times face to face and often online. Some of this is because I have some features in my face that are naturally occurring in men, not women. Although they are not expressed profoundly they are definitely visible, and thus as a teen and young adult i was confused...I had male thoughts and desires and actions, and I had a female body I didn't want...and my face was starting to look male! But genitalia I possess at the time was female, though unusually large downstairs. If I am not intersex like my cousin, then why do I have such masculinity in various ways? Perhaps scientists and doctors could test me and find some things out, but in the end...it does not matter...what matters is what gender am I, and do I feel I have one, and do I want one?

I do. I had prayed God to make me male when I was only 11. That was long before looking male. Unlike one poster here, I didn't find in time hormones made it all better. I just got more sad and confused. I did try to act female cuz I gave up, I could no longer stand wearing sports bras and wanting to be happy but could not be. However, in my pursuit to be all I could be female, I got so unhappy! I eventually began questioning, and when got internet at home found out what I was...I think I am FTM. I don't have any proof other than feelings. If my feelings of being male don't count, then my life up to now does not count. Being fake is being without my true feelings. Acting full time drains me. I wish to quit please.

 

If there was no gender, we would have a lot of problems. Because people are different. Bodies are different. Obviously, hormones would be a problem. If someone was older and needed hormone replacement therapy, then what would they get?

I would hate a world without gender. We wouldn't be ourselves. It would be some freaky, crazy world.

Hwever, we do need a world where it is ok to be a different gender. A world where someone who is transitioning can find what is best for them without judgment.

 

There is actually some sort of scientific evidence for being transgender. When looking at the brains of transgender people, FtMs had brains that more resembled the male brain structure, whilst MtFs had brains that more resembled the female brain structure.

It's not yet fully conclusive, but it seems that is probably the cause of transgenderism. The brain develops into one sex after the body. A flood of one hormone or the other can screw that up whilst in the brain. The body had already made up its mind, but the brain has yet to. That all goes wrong and BOOM. We exist. Science proves it.

 

I know I'm jumping into this conversation rather late, but yes gender is a real thing. Gender is by its definition a social construct. Since men and women exist in the context of our society gender does exist. However it is not a binary of just men and women. Even in history Native American cultures had 3 or 4 genders.


The more relevant question is how much gender is actually influenced by sex.

 

This would help a lot for advocacy, and for getting the word out for parents to have a suspected child tested and then following a recommended protocol very early, as with any medical condition. Likely for children that would involve allowing the child to live as their internal gender externally, with a name, clothing, whatever allows them to do that comfortably. I think this is a very important step, to define it scientifically and identify specific things to look for in the brain, to greatly advance the understanding worldwide and to significantly improve the experience and survival rates associated with being born transgender. Without this large-scale understanding, it is currently a life-threatening condition, both from suicide and from violence.

The only reason I brought up my side of this thread was to encourage the identification of this biological difference, or where more research is needed, since I am a professor in a university and have been able to have input into better advocacy and new research directions for misunderstood medical conditions at my university before. Part of dealing with the issue of transgender, is dealing with the perception of it and advocacy for it within the majority non-transgender world. If they get it, the problems associated with this medical condition significantly decrease.

---------- Post added 11th Jan 2013 at 08:29 AM ----------

This is of course the other half of being transgender, and obviously no less important than the perception of outsiders part. It is wonderful that you have come to an acceptance of yourself. To the world, it really does matter what medical researchers could find that distinguishes your condition from your cousin's, from mine, from anyone's - that finding could help to end all this violence and ignorance over being born this way, and save a lot of lives and misery in the process. But to you, it does not matter, and that is really wonderful - I hope all people can grow up feeling that kind of certainty and confidence in who they are. As a researcher, I also hope some will be open to participating in respectful studies of biomarkers (visible, provable signs of a condition that define where or not one has it) someday simply to aid in advocacy around the world and medical care protocols so transgender individuals get the care they need lifelong without fear of discrimination, globally. But for now, most important is that you know who you are and you are ok with that, and that you can share your journey with others who are suffering and are earlier in the process.

---------- Post added 11th Jan 2013 at 08:40 AM ----------

Question: There is physical sex - female, male, both, conflicted, ambiguous, etc. So would gender be the expression of that physical sex? [since my definition of "social construct" seemed to be pretty strongly rejected by those who are trans]

So one can be born with female genitalia and male brain patterns, so the physical sex is conflicted both M and F. But the expression of the physical sex (the way he speaks, moves, feels, relates to the world), which would be male because his brain is male, would be masculine gender.

Would others who deal with this agree with that possible definition for gender? Because although there are societal expectations for gender, and certainly a lot of people posting to this thread do not like them or find them necessary, those societal expectations can then be separate from how a person themselves expresses their physical sex (which whether we are used to it or not has to include how we feel, think, as well as how we look externally, because the brain is still a physical part of the body - all of them go together under "physical sex" although not under "genitalia," which is only one component of a person's physical sex biologically).

 

I am not sure I undy the question, but I think you are asking if gender is the way my mind has me relate to the world?
Or did you mean gender is the way I would express my current biological condition in the world?

After I found in April that there are others like me and this is a condition under Queer, in an umbrella term called Transgender, and that one possible close definition of transsexual or slightly less than that could be what I have been experiencing and expressing in bursts all my life, I began to not hide as much of my real self from the world around me. I would not say I am 100% out, not just as telling others, but as in not being all the time comfy to express my full self in public. I do NOT express female...but sometimes I try to hold back a bit on my masculine responses as fast as I can to not get outed or get told I am weird again.

As for my female shape, I do not express it as female anymore, even if I still get assumed to be one. I have worn on rare occasions a packer in public, but did not want the bulge to show, it was for me to feel more confident only.

 

I always found gender to be tedious, and hard to understand. I am biological female who identifies as a lesbian. However, I have recently found I identify more with a nueter gender identity more than anything else. I find the expectations of masculinity and femininity to be highly stressful. Socially I struggle and I have always felt awkward in interactions with both sexe's. Gender is a very real thing to many people, but to me it makes no sense. Growing up this has always been a problem. We are socially gendered from a very early age. I hated this even when I was a kid. I never understood why everything girl was associated with "pink" or boys with "blue". I wasn't a tomboy, I wasn't a girly girl. There was no place for me. Even today I feel like I fit nowhere. Body disphoria is not a problem for me. My problem is more of a social expectation issue.

 

I feel the need to weigh in, here. There are obviously gender definitions in dictionaries and there are obviously girl body parts and boy parts. No one is questioning that. What society generally sees as male and female roles and stereotypes is more questionable. Blue and pink, for example. Colors are not actually gender-identified. Society assigned those gender-identities. Things such as skirts, dresses, frills, long/short hair ... Again, those are fluid throughout history and artificially assigned by society to either men women, or both at different periods. What actually makes a person male or female is the chemistry of the body. And yes, it is scientific. People devote their entire lives to gender studies. There has been tons of research done on brain chemistry and patterns of the different genders. As one poster replied, there are also differences in the endocrine systems and hormone levels and functions in the body. For this reason you cannot make a man a woman simply by cutting off his penis any more than you could by cutting off his finger, because that doesnt change the chemistry of his body or his brain. This is exactly where the issue of transgenderism comes from - the brain chemistry not matching the physical attributes of the body.

I am guessing OP poses this question bc he/she is dealing with issues of transgenderism and would rather believe there is no such thing as gender than to swim the rough waters of gender identity and transition.

 

The physical attributes of 'male' or 'female' constitute sex, not gender.

But you are right that gender is arbitrary, its norms totally fabricated by human society. Blue versus pink is a good example; a century ago pink was associated with boys and considered a strong masculine color, whereas blue, long associated with the Virgin Mary, was considered appropriate for girls. Today these colours are completely reversed.

Even as someone who has recognized this, and acknowledged the general absurdity of assigning certain colours to be "male" or "female", I still find myself subconsciously associating pink with females and blue with males. Certainly the society I live in constantly re-enforces this in my mind...if I saw two bathroom doors, one blue, one pink, I would know right away which one is the 'men's room' and which is the 'ladies' room', even though there is nothing inherently female about pink or male about blue. But it's a learned behavior; I wasn't born with any sort of inherent notion that I should prefer blue to pink because I'm a 'boy'.

So there is no doubt gender is deeply ingrained in our brains, but I don't see any reason to doubt that it is a social construct. Seems like some people these days want to believe that everything is decided by genetics, and that the environment around us and the social conditioning we are subjected to by our society from the day we are born has no impact on our psychological development. But really so many aspects of human society are totally contrived and have no real basis in nature.

 

No, because even if you have a male brain (< THAT exactly is gender; the male brain -- with male patterns -- you're talking about), it doesn't necessarily mean the way you "move" or "speak" is "masculine", because those are gender roles, made by society. Even if you have a male brain (= male gender), you can still act feminine.

What is considered normal for both genders -- the way they should act etc --, called gender roles, is definitely determined by society. But society doesn't determine what gender you are, that is all biologically determined in your brain.

 

I can only speak for myself, I want to make that really clear. Whatever I write here, it is just me and my viewpoint, which might just as well be wrong in the bigger picture, I am not claiming anything goes for anyone but me

But yeah, for me there definitely is such a thing as gender, I feel female in body, in mind.

If you stopped calling the two boxes masculine and feminine, for me there`d still be boxes, though possibly with a lot in between them. With opposites. Soft, curvy. Harder, square. (Body type). That`s the physical part, for me. In my head, femininity is soft and curvy. That`s what I identify physically as, and not the opposite, when I see it. My GF is also soft and curvy, and felt very different from when I was with and had sex with a guy when I was younger. Generally, males and females moves (the way I see it) differently, smells differently, etc - The opposition between the two is very big to me. Emotionally I don`t feel that there`s a difference, psychologically, I think the difference is more fleeting, and a lot more tied to what we are taught, at least that is how I see it for me. I was taught that men are tough and strong, women are good with pain, and excellent organizers. How much of what I was thought actually has a statistical truth to it, I have never checked. But to this day, if I help moving heavy furniture around, or something similar, I feel "macho"/masculine.

Generally I feel 80% feminine, about 20% masculine. The times when I feel masculine often has something to do with physical activities of some sort.

It is a complicated question though, but for me, I would never feel that there is not such a thing as gender, however, I could believe that less of what we contribute to gender, is genetic, or.. hmm.. how to explain that... I think a lot of it can be about what we are taught, about how to think.

If I suddenly was in a male body, I would feel pretty freaked out. If there was no such thing as gender, why would it matter? And obviously it is not just me being used to having a female body, considering all the people who realize they are in the wrong body in an early age. And what is gender, really, but a classification of an individual. Ultimately, I would feel it is about the physical stuff. I identify as female, I want a female body, I am a female in the sense that I feel that the body I have is the right one. I want to be with a female, so I look for a female body, for a person who is in the right classification of individual, who has the female body, and is of the female gender.

My GF however, says that I really should not be discussing this with some of her friends, who are adamant that there really is not such thing as gender, and who dresses/acts as neutral as possible. I am not quite sure I understand what makes a person so adamant about it, but at the same time just as my feelings of self is real and valid to me, any other persons feelings about themselves are as real and valid for them. They identify as, well, I am not sure if it is about it being neither, or both, or something in between, or if I am thinking about it all wrong. I never actually dared asking, as my GF told me it would incite a large discussion, and I was just far too scared of accidentally insulting her friends, as we had just met for the first time (me and her friends, that is)

 

I see what you mean, but I was talking about how one is born. I was born moving and speaking and acting a certain way, and I did not learn to do what society wanted me to do as a girl, until I was about 12. So certainly I can still act feminine because I was taught to, but if everyone had just left me alone, I would be walking around naturally very much the way I did when I was 10, very much masculine-minded. Just to clarify what I meant.

---------- Post added 12th Jan 2013 at 08:57 AM ----------

You what's really funny, when I asked myself this question, I thought "If I was suddenly in a male body... I would be really happy, and I could finally get on with the business of what I want to do!"

But the thing is, I have accepted being a woman, because first, there is no science that can effectively change that for me, it is rudimentary at best. I would want to be tall, full of muscles, have a dick (but not balls, too soft and gross), and find it easy to be confident and not be questioned in sports or at work or in finances - and current transitioning does not provide that. Second, because I really have fallen in love with a lot of aspects of being a woman, and am proud of it. I think women are exceptionally strong and versatile in their skills because they have to be, and they also tend to be excellent at listening to and supporting others. I can do these things as a woman, and be softer sometimes, motherly, and people don't question it. I would miss that if I suddenly woke up as a man, not to mention I would be distanced from a lot of my friends and have to make new guy friends because most of my friends would not feel as close to me if I were a guy as our relationships stand. We relate about an awful lot of female things, and due to circumstances although I love guys I just don't have as many of them in my life anymore.

So even though my mind may still be masculine in lots of ways and I really had to struggle very hard to deal with and accept this female body, I have enough about me that is female that I feel ok living as a woman. And although I wish things were gender neutral, society is just not like that, and there really are big differences in living inside a male body versus a female one even if society were not involved. So I live with the dichotomy, and am pretty happy anyway. I don;t have the male name and body that I longed for as a kid, but I do have the life I was given, and it's pretty good. Unfortunately, not everyone can live with their body, because their situation is much more severe than mine, so of course I'm not implying that everyone can do this - just that there is a wide range of experiences of being human.

---------- Post added 12th Jan 2013 at 09:13 AM ----------

And this is exactly why the LGBTQ community has a very uneasy relationship with each other, because views on and experiences of this issue vary widely and are felt very deeply as a central issue for many of us in how we live our lives. It's the reason that the Michgan Womyn's Music Festival, a long-running all-female and only-female weeklong festival in the summer, has had issues because it is overrun with lesbians and yet refuses to accept transwomen onto the grounds, sparking enormous protest and sympathetic armbands worn by those women who do attend throughout the week, along with a lot of protest signs and quite a bit of arguing. The thing is, the experience of being lesbian is very different from the experience of being gay, and both are very different from the experience of being bisexual. The experience of being trans and straight is very different from any of those. The experience of being genderqueer or gender neutral is very different from being trans as a defined gender. But all of us are put together in this category LGBTQ, when in some cases the most misunderstanding of us comes from one of the other letter categories, not the straight people born into the correct bodies for them.

I'm really glad we're having this conversation here, and that so far it is not out of control and full of shouting. But if we do not find ways of communicating to each other how we feel and what we mean, while accepting what others feel as different to our experience but of equal value, this is going to be a very long struggle. It is possible for some people to experience no gender, for some to experience only gender roles assigned by society, and some to experience gender as a strong identification within their brain. And even though I personally believe these differences can be explained by science (or will be able to eventually), that has no bearing on the fact that the experiences of being human are very different for all of these people, and that each of those experiences are valid and heart-rending, and also heart-affirming, in their own way.

I don't think the answer is not to talk. I think the answer is to talk from the heart and with ground rules, at the appropriate time when everyone participating is ready, perhaps in small groups to keep it calm, and to work from there outwards. Probably the majority of people under LGBTQ don't like gender roles, and also don't like being discriminated against. So that is a commonality and a starting point. But we have to stop defining how life feels for other people - reality for us may not be reality for them, because we live in different bodies and different communities. When we staunchly declare only one truth in human experience, we run into problems because we invalidate other people's feelings. So we can express our own realities without insisting this is true for all other people on Earth, because we haven't met all other people on Earth yet to know for sure.

 

[/QUOTE]You what's really funny, when I asked myself this question, I thought "If I was suddenly in a male body... I would be really happy, and I could finally get on with the business of what I want to do!"

But the thing is, I have accepted being a woman, because first, there is no science that can effectively change that for me, it is rudimentary at best. I would want to be tall, full of muscles, have a dick (but not balls, too soft and gross), and find it easy to be confident and not be questioned in sports or at work or in finances - and current transitioning does not provide that. [/QUOTE]



I would be happy too to wake up male and just say "Hi, Im better now, let's get on with it."

But "accept being a woman'??? EWW! NO!

I don't have to...there are many options, and I definitely was glad to find them so I do NOT have to accept nothing. How many fully transitioned transmen have you known personally face to face? I have 2 that are fully done, and I don't see any difference between them and cis-male but a few scars. confidence in yourself or being good at work, money and sports is up to you...unless it just is not in your ability at all...has nothing to do with gender.

 

i'm really surprised that no one has posted this in this thread yet.



i feel like a lot of the disagreement in this thread is because of misunderstanding over the word "gender" because it can mean more than one thing even though people often use it as if it were just one thing.

to me "gender" is like an onion in that many layers of different things come together to form it, and it seems to me that too often people try simplify it.

anyway, i'll comment more later. on a train about to reach my stop!

 

No, that was pretty much what I wrote too (about certain things being real for the people that feel it is so), and I agree. Generally I think that there is not really a wrong or right answer in a matter like this. Just different opinions. And if we all just respect the different opinions, and don`t try to persuade each other, then people don`t have to fight about it. I find it difficult though, when you in certain groups can`t even ask people questions, to get a better understanding of a viewpoint, because if you happen to accidentally say something about your own viewpoint on a matter, it could be seen as disrespectful and "wrong". I have experienced that in some circles, you better just nod and agree, or there will be trouble. In those situations, I rather just nod and agree, because my viewpoint on a matter such as gender, is not so important that I am willing to let it cause trouble.

Is the reality different for the different LGBT person, probably, but in how big degree I am unsure of. And does that mean that we cannot understand each other, I think not. It is not so valid for me, that just because someone else is different, I could not possibly understand how life is for that person. Or, his/her/hir viewpoint. Most people can, in my opinion, understand more than other people give them credit for, and sometimes more than they are willing too.

So, maybe I am a bit different in that area, because I really don`t see us all as such different people. If I am in a group with one transgender, one lesbian, one bisexual person, I most of the time feel like I am in a group with other fellow LGBT people, I do not feel like I am in a group with people completely different from me. Most of the time we all have some things in common, and some differences, just like it would be if a group of all straight people were sitting together. I know that not all other people feel the same, but for me, the fellowship of being different from the straight unseen "norm" has a value, even if there are differences inside that group again. I feel we have more things in common, than we have things that separate us. But that`s just me. Like some people are patriotic over nation, I am a sexual patriot, lol! When I read a positive piece of news for LGBT, I find it just as pleasing if it is good for lesbians, as for transgenders, because to me, what is good for one part of the fellowship, is good for the other part as well Call me sappy, lol! :icon_wink

A little more on topic, I think gender is real if it is real for the person who has it. If someone feels that their qualities is a mix between what is called masculine, and what is called feminine, or that it really does not make sense to them that the qualities could be considered belonging to one or either group, or if they do not feel that they fit in either of the boxes proclaimed male/female, then gender is pretty non existent for that person.
But for me, gender is very real. So for me, yeah, gender exists. And my physical gender fits mostly with my psychological gender. I guess, I feel like my mind could be either or, if it had not been for the fact that if it had suddenly been in a body alien to it, a male one, then it would feel that something is wrong, meaning I could not really imagine being something else than female, because of the physical aspect.
:icon_wink

 

If there wasn't such a think as gender, there wouldn't be sexuality and if there wasn't sexuality, then why are we here? Also if there wasn't gender, why would there be trans people? Surely we would all just be and accept that of what we were at birth, if there was no gender.

I'm a man and I'm attracted to men, not women. Therefore I am attracted to a certain gender.

 

I like this way of thinking about it. It's simple and covers a broad range of situations. Nice.

 

I just don't agree with this. Then what is how we feel? That, to me, is gender. I can still be feminine in society's view (I'm not, but I have a few friends who are), but that doesn't mean I feel any less male as a gender.

 

I'm going to go ahead and say yes, there is such a thing as gender, based on a combination of genetics and personal feeling. The vast majority of people fall under the category of XY, or XX chromosomes, though there are, of course, those with Klinefelter syndrome, who have XXY. Then there are the transgendered, who, though physically one sex, identify as another. I'm not trying to say that those who don't identify with a particular gender are wrong, I'm just saying I don't understand how someone can not identify with either one or the other.

 

my humble opinion is that gender is very much a social construction. maybe not 100% so, but largely it is. that doesn't mean, however, that it isn't real. of course it is. discrimination, religion, race-- all of these things are socially constructed and all of them are 100% real. asking whether gender is real or not is an absurd question, imho.

there has been a lot of discussion about trans* people in this thread and as is often the case, people are using the term transgender, an umbrella term, when what they sometimes really mean is transsexual. it's hard distinguishing between these two terms because transgender is the more well known and common term, but when talking about transsexuals (people who feel they were born the wrong sex), it should be noted that it's both gender AND sex that is the issue, not just gender. if it was just gender, such is the case with genderqueer people and cross dressers (both of which fit under the same transgender umbrella as transsexuals), the person probably wouldn't feel a strong need to surgically alter their sex, which many transsexuals do.

i should say that i am not a transsexual so all of the above is just my opinion based on my own research and experiences and i welcome correction if anyone thinks i'm wrong. it really saddens me that some people have taken offense to some of the things in this thread and i sincerely hope that what i've said hasn't added to the offense.